No matter what treatment option Joel Embiid goes with, a change of play style may have to be in his future too.
This is all operating under the assumption that Joel Embiid will be able to play at a semi-regular basis again. With him and the team reportedly exploring more experimental options, everything feels on the table at this point.
When Embiid at media day talked about his goal of being healthy for the playoffs, the weight he lost and shape he got in was one of the first things that came up. He also talked about taking a bit of a step back.
The idea that the team didn’t completely revolve around him was something that could work while also putting his body through an easier workload. The 65-game threshold for awards, All-Star honors, none of that stuff mattered.
“My job I feel like this year is to empower those guys, especially Tyrese [Maxey],” he said. “I think my job is just go out there and let him be ‘the guy.’”
He had various other quotes to similar effect about trying to get his teammates involved when he first took the court this season in November.
When he returned from a month long absence in February, he brought up the topic of playing a different style to conserve his body, though mostly on the defensive end.
“Stop jumping into traffic, little things like that matters,” he said. “It might hurt me a little bit, I might not be as dominant as I usually am rebounding or defensively, but whatever it takes to win.”
Embiid has always talked about doing everything it takes to win, but it’s been hard for him to put that to practice so far. He’s talked about taking safer falls his entire career, but as seen in his last game against the Nets, he is going to close out hard if he feels it necessary.
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When he’s been on the court, he has still been used like the offensive hub that was winning scoring titles. Despite an 11-point decrease in points per game and a 12% drop in effective field goal percentage, Embiid still has the highest usage rate on the team.
Not only is his 35.2% usage rate the largest on the Sixers, but it’s still one of the higher rates in the entire league — the 99th percentile, per Cleaning the Glass, to be exact.
Embiid is far from the first player to struggle with the reality of where his body is at, and he certainly won’t be the last. How fast this has all happened to him almost assuredly factors into his lack of confidence into how much he can do. However long ago it feels, it was only last season he was averaging more than a point per minute played.
On some level, everyone knows that a drastic change in play style is needed. Embiid’s basketball IQ is frankly too high for that not to be the case. Watching him try to put that into practice though has been a struggle.
“I can still be really good, because I have a tendency to be smart in terms of positioning, little stuff like that,” Embiid said after a Feb. 4 win over the Dallas Mavericks.
When Nick Nurse was asked about the same topic on Feb. 24, it was the defensive end of the floor that he went to as well, but pointed out the team is still trying to figure out his limitations.
“It’s been a little bit of a back-and-forth on some of that stuff, of just what kind of coverages and things we’re playing to keep him out of that sort of stuff,” he said, “try to limit some of the number of drives that we’re going down there for rim protection, but also understanding that at some points we needed to see what he could do and what the team needed to be done at those points as well.”
Nurse also used the team going zone defense against a Boston Celtics team literally raining down threes as a measure to conserve Embiid’s body.
Taking advantage of that positioning and other little things still needs some figuring out to do though. Since Feb. 4, the Sixers are ranked 28th in defense, allowing 121.4 points per 100 possessions, per Cleaning the Glass. Embiid appeared in seven of those nine games.
The team, and Embiid himself, knows what changes have to be made. A former MVP realizing his prime is closing sooner than expected though is one of the hardest realities to accept and is not a quick fix.
There will be plenty of time to romanticize Embiid’s prime and what could have been, but ceding his role as the No. 1 guy may be necessary to prolonging his career. If this season has shown anything, the Sixers might just be out of other options.